I thought this would be an interesting thread, especially since I’m planning on building my next PC from scratch.
I would be vert interested in hearing what some of you guys think, considering the fact that I’m sure there are much more knowledgable & experienced people here with computers than myself.
Basically, I want to build the “mother of all PCs” and plan on a budget of about $2500 to $3000. Basically, I want to build a PC that has way more power than I will actually need (kinda like putting a 454 c.i. engine in a Volkswagon bug). I use my PC for business, and I need to be able to run numerous applications at the same time without any slow downs.
Tell me if I’m crazy, but here’s a few thing I had in mind…
Dual Pentium 3.0 (or higher) processors
2 gigs DDR Ram to run with each processor (total of 4 gigs DDR Ram)
The best Motherboard (whatever that may be)
800 Megehertz side bus (unless something larger is available)
500 watt power supply
The most powerful graphics card with it’s own RAM
2 200gig hard drives with 8 meg buffer (unless higher is available)
(2 hard drives…1 as primary, and one for backup)
Windows 2000 Professional
OK…what do you guys think of all this? Money isn’t really an object, because I should be able to buy all this and put it all together for under $3000 (so let’s not worry about that!)
Any suggestions of things I can do to make this even better???
Thanks, archigamer. These are exactly the types of replies I need so I can learn what to do in order to get maximum performance.
I’ve heard of the 64 bit processor out. Is the XEON processor 64 bit technology? For some reason, I think I’d prefer to stay with Intel products, unless someone has very convincing documentation as to why I should consider AMD.
I’ve not heard of RDRam. Is this a recent technology release? I’d love to hear more about it…would you happen to have any links I could checkout on this?
What about sidebus speed? Is 800 sidebus as big as it gets these days? I figure they should have something larger out by now.
And thanks for the graphics card tip. I have heard that alot of gamer are using Radeon products because they perform.
I personally prefer AMD, I have built 3 machines with AMD processors and have loved them ever since. For the amount of cash you spend on their processors you get a lot of bang for your buck.
As for the FSB 800 is the fastest there is atm. However dont look at the FSB as the determining factor for buying a processor. AMD processors run at a slower FSB but still perform as good as a 800 FSB from intel. From my understanding 800 is not the true speed. (dont quote me on that)
I’d go with dual AMD Althon XP 2500 chips (Barton Core :D), a huge server case, 3 to 4 hard drives at least 100gig each, a few video cards (for immersive Final Fantasy XI play…more monitors = better area to see)…I’d probably go with an Asus MoBo, at least a gig and a half of DDR Memory, 7.1 surround sound speaker system, RAID for the HDs, CD burner, DVD burner, dual floppy drives (because it looks funny :p), CD Reader, DVD Reader all that good stuff.
if you buy an over the top pc system today…it will be most certainly only a state of the art of mediocre system in a matter of time (maybe 1yr)…besides it will be cheap cheap cheap then…but hey…back to the original topic:
The Pentium4 chip cannot be run in a dual setup (you’ll need to get Xeons for that - on the downside those don’t support FSB800 (yet)…)…so the question would be: do you really need a dual processor setup? I would say nope…and you could get a superb system with one processor and spend the dough on some decent graphics card and hdds etc…so here it goes:
P4HT, 3GHz
Intel i875P chipset board
2x 512MB PC3200 DDR
ATI Radeon 9800XT
Raidcore S-ATA-Raid5-Controller
3+ HDDs WD Raptor (10k rpm!)
Decent Case
DVD+/-R (Plextor 708 or the new LiteOn one)
decent DVD drive
and you’re :tup: :tup: :tup: on any benchmark list
Yeah go Athlon 64 if your building the ultimate computer. And SCSI hard drives in hot swappable cages, using RAID. I dont remember what type of RAID it is, but there is one that uses at least 3 drives, its a combination of the mirroring and striping. If one of the three drives fails, you can restore it using the info on the other two drives.
Athlon 64, maybe dual 64s if you can, as much RAM as you can afford, huge server case, dual redundant power supplies, hot swappable hard drives in a RAID array, dual head video card (do NOT get one of the cards designed for pro use. They are optimized for CAD programs and such, not games. Unless you want that…)
I built pretty much the ultimate pc. Well, not really ultimate, but pretty close. Ive got dual 2600+ chips (should have gotten 2500s, run cooler and more overclockable) a gig of ram, dual 120gig hard drives, radeon 9700pro.
Remember, though, you need a monitor too. If you spend 3k on the computer, dont skimp on the monitor. Get dual 22" flat panels
Well since I just ordered a computer from ncix.com And plan on building it. The best bang for money would be the athlon xp2500 you can overclock the fsb to 400mhz easly and get pentium 2.8ghz speed for about $300 less. Xeons are extremely bad unless you multitask since the 533mhz fsb is for BOTH prossesors so 533mhz divided by two is 266mhz. Opterons are way to expensive. Athlon 64’s are sadisticly expensive.
Remember mhz doesn’t mean speed a 2.6ghz p4 is only that speed because it has multiple (Near 20) deep pipes that make it 2.6ghz while a athlon has fewer pipes but with shorter distances making it fast as or faster than intel based systems. Thats why you see a G5 at 1.85 ghz going faster than a p4 at 2.8ghz
I guess it wouldn’t hurt to ask, although I know it’ll be much more expensive, but does anyone know of a good place to buy a high performance PC that’s optimized for gaming?
I figure if it’s setup for extreme performance, it would be good enough for what I’m needing it for.
I may as well compare a package deal, versus building my own.
That was my initial view on this…reckon I can build a nice system for $2500 to $3000?
I guess I need to make a checklist of exactly what is need to build an entire PC. Not necessarily the brand names of componets, but an exhaustive list of all the parts needed.
